Tag Along Job-hunting With A Dead Soprano

July 27, 2000|By Robin Finn, New York Times News Service.

NEW YORK — Running late at rush hour, the actor Vincent Pastore can't resist regressing to a part he played in real life -- limo driver -- before landing his Hamlet, the plum role of Sal "Big Pussy" Bompensiero. You know, the cuddly cat burglar/hit man/mob informer who came to a briny end this season, sent to sleep with the fishes by his best friend, Tony, on the HBO cult hit "The Sopranos."

Hunched behind the wheel of his new Saturn ("I don't drive no Mercedes-Benz," he protests later), Pastore takes a sure-fire short cut that according to his sidekick, Charlie Sammarco -- along as a security blanket -- lands them north when they want to go south and costs them 20 minutes in motionless 9th Avenue traffic. Good thing you quit your day job, Mr. Pastore.

To make a late actor even later, next come a half-dozen interruptions between the parking lot and Pastore's hangout, the West Bank Cafe, as pedestrians recognize the chunky guy behind the shades and pay their respects: "Hey, Puss!"

Sammarco, who grew up with Pastore in New Rochelle, N.Y. (where, they say, their fathers longed for the Mafiosi lifestyle but were nailed to the norm by their mothers) and like him saluted a midlife crisis by quitting the daily grind to be an actor, divulges the tale of their tardiness while Pastore exchanges hugs in the restaurant doorway.

That performance a wrap, he sails past his usual corner spot: "It's Danny Aiello's table, but they seat me there now too," he announces. His great mission was becoming "the next Danny Aiello," and with table treatment like this, he must be making headway. Or was, until Tony and company tossed him overboard.

Right until he hit his mark for his death scene, Pastore was in denial about the decision by the creator of "The Sopranos," David Chase, to revoke Big Pussy's family privileges and Pastore's weekly paycheck, his best and biggest since he gave up running a nightclub to become an actor at 42.

Settling into the remote corner he has deemed appropriate for a post-death interview, he orders iced tea and a trio of shrimp cocktails, bolts down his carbo-blockers (he's trying to shrink back to 220 from 250), rattles off a list of his future films (in one he diversifies and plays a priest!), then turns vulnerable. For the moment, he's unemployed.

Nervous about your future?

"If you're my psychologist, I'm probably telling you I'm thinking I'm off the show because my work wasn't good enough," he confesses. He learned his days were numbered in a good-news-bad-news call from Chase. The good news? Big Pussy would have a banner season. The bad news? It would be his last. Once Big Pussy became a rat, Pastore knew what came next: extermination.

That didn't stop the wishful thinker (and occasional playwright) from inventing alternative story lines, most "a little General Hospital-ish," but take it from Pastore, it's no fun being dead at 53-ish.

Sure, HBO still provides invitations to premieres, like one for the drama "Oz" ("It's not my premiere, so I can be late to it," he says, glumly, over steak and steamed broccoli). But there's no getting around that orphaned feeling: "Everyone knows me as Pussy, but the fact is, I'm not a Soprano anymore. Thank God for unemployment and residuals. `The Sopranos' was my lottery."

As a kid in working-class New Rochelle, Pastore lived above an Italian social club (but not Mafia, he says), where his father was not just a member, but the custodian. After school, Pastore helped clean the bar and the card room, and after getting out of the Navy and dropping out of Pace University (major: dramatic arts), he parlayed his experience tending bar into club ownership in New Rochelle. He also honed his theater experience. Lots of musicals. The gangster roles came later.

Hired as an extra on films, he became known as "the upgrade king" because, starting with "Carlito's Way," he ad-libbed himself into bit parts. The parts got bigger. So did he: He ballooned 30 pounds to play Angelo Ruggerio in "Gotti." Now he's losing the pounds and maybe the mobster tag.

And if the acting career "folds up," as he puts it? Pastore, whose 90-year-old father still lives in New Rochelle, believes that you can go home again. "I can always go back into the club business. Maybe we'll call it Big Pussy's."